HP CEO confirms no new smartphones coming in 2013

Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Meg Whitman on Wednesday revealed that the struggling PC company will not be releasing a new smartphone in the coming year. The announcement came during a meeting with analysts where the executive reaffirmed her previous statements that HP will eventually offer another handset to avoid falling behind the curve, Computer World reported.

“We don’t have any plans to introduce a smartphone in 2013, but we’ve got to start thinking about what is our unique play, how do we capture this element of the personal computing market?” she said. “I believe that five years from now, if we don’t have a smartphone or whatever the next generation of that device is, we’ll be locked out of a huge segment of the population in many countries of the world.”

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek last month said that he believes HP will “aggressively attack” the smartphone and tablet markets, even though such a move carries considerable risks.